Authors Electric

During this glorious May Bank Holiday, when the temperature rose to 25C and the house smelled of summer, I spent much of my time in the garden. I sat and read, watched the frogs in the pond but I also got down to some desperately needed weeding. It was when I was dealing with this year’s explosion of dandelions when I was struck by an odd comparison. Like a good novel or short story, the dandelion has hidden depths. Not only do the roots burrow deep and tenaciously, they spread themselves throughout the vegetable patch, just as a novel can insinuate itself into the subconscious--  a case in point being the archetypal romantic hero, forever characterised by the urbane Mr Darcy, or the wild Heathcliff. They may not be the best role models, certainly neither of them would make good twenty-first century husbands but they would be hard to eradicate from the female psyche, however liberated we believe ourselves to be. As would be the image of the feisty heroine such as Demel...

But we do need our heroes. I’m not ashamed to admit this will be a trashy post. A soap-post in a world of documentaries. Pulp fiction in a sea of great literary classics. What on earth am I talking about? Heroes. Preferably the dark and brooding ones. Think Heathcliff or Mellors . The bad-boys we love to hate – or hate to love. Or even Mr Darcy – and now I’m struggling to think of a romantic hero we all know and love, as romance just isn’t something I read much. But really this post is just an excuse for us girlies to consider and discuss the abundance of hot men on television. And I’m talking Aidan Turner and Luke Pasqualino here. When you think about it, Ross Poldark – if he was a real person – would have been some pox-ridden, lice-infested, smelly bloke with a chip on his shoulder. Nobody in the late 18 th century would have been particularly hygienic, even in the upper-class (why do you think the Georgian era country houses had wooden panelling on the walls...